[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 180 (Tuesday, November 14, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H12315-H12316]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   REPUBLICANS ARE SECRETIVE ABOUT CONTENTS OF BUDGET RECONCILIATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I was just listening to the gentleman from 
Florida talk about Medicare and the budget, and I guess my response, 
initially, is that I just wish I knew what was in this budget 
reconciliation, as we call it, and what is coming out of the 
conference. Because one of the things that outrages me is the whole 
process that the Republican leadership has used from the very beginning 
in dealing with Medicare and the budget, and that is that we, as 
Democrats, do not know what is going on.
  Mr. Speaker, they started out by bringing up the bill in the 
Committee on Commerce, in the Committee on Ways and Means, in some 
cases without any hearings, in some cases with very few hearings, 
giving us drafts of the bill either on Medicare, Medicaid, or the other 
reconciliation items either the night before or sometimes the morning 
that we were expected to vote on it.
  This process continued today. I was really outraged when I went over 
to the Senate today. Last night those of us who were conferees on the 
budget, those of us who were supposed to work out the differences 
between the House and the Senate, were told last night that there was 
to be a conference at 3 o'clock this afternoon over on the Senate side. 
When I went over there with my other colleagues from the Committee on 
Commerce and from other committees we were first of all told there were 
not going to be any opening statements, that we were not allowed to 
speak; then we were told we were not allowed to ask questions; and 
finally, we were not even given a copy of the conference bill that has 
been mostly worked out in secret by the Republican leadership in the 
House and the Senate.
  So once again, Mr. Speaker, this process continues. The Republican 
leadership does not want the American people, and certainly not the 
Democrats in this House, to know what they are doing. They hammer out 
secret agreements, in the case over the budget, over Medicare and 
Medicaid, without having any Democrats participate in the process. It 
certainly is not fair, it is outrageous, and it goes against the very 
democratic process that this House and this institution are supposed to 
be all about.
  These are important issues. The differences between the House and the 
Senate bill on Medicare and on Medicaid are significant. For example, 
in nursing home standards. We know that in the Senate bill they 
continue the Federal nursing home standards. They do not in the House 
bill. How do I know what the difference is and what has been worked out 
in conference? I will probably have to read about it in tomorrow's 
newspaper.
  We also know there was a significant difference with regard to 
pensions, because in the House version basically corporations are 
allowed to dip into their employees' pensions to use for various 
purposes. In the Senate bill they were not allowed that. I read this 
morning in the Washington Post that the conference has worked out a 
plan which says that a controversial provision that would allow 
corporations to withdraw excess money from workers' pension funds to 
pay for other employees and retirement benefits is apparently in the 
conference bill.
  It is nice I read it in the newspaper, but there is no indication at 
this point as to what really happened. Certainly not the intricacies of 
what happened.
  I also got a press release today with regard to my home State of New 
Jersey. Some of my Republican colleagues, in fact half of them on the 
other side, voted against the Medicare bill and against the Republican 
budget bill, as did I, because they thought it was unfair to the State 
and it would hurt senior citizens in the State of New Jersey.
  An AP story comes out and says New Jersey office estimates higher 
Medicaid funds for the States. Apparently, the conference, which I have 
not seen, includes another $654 million in additional money beyond the 
House version in the bill for the State of New Jersey. Of course, they 
failed to point out that current law would provide $6 billion more. So, 
in effect, we have lost about $5.5 billion because of what came out in 
the conference report.
  Again, Mr. Speaker, it is a constant effort to be secretive about 
what is going on, to reveal items in press releases or in the 
newspapers the next 

[[Page H 12316]]
day and try to put a positive spin on them, but there is no positive 
spin.
  The bottom line is that this Medicare bill will cut Medicare to 
basically provide tax cuts for wealthy Americans and that is what this 
conference report is apparently doing. The bottom line is that it is 
going to destroy the Medicare program as we know it and make it 
impossible for seniors to stay in a traditional Medicare program, 
forcing them into HMOs where they will not have a choice of doctors.
  With regard to Medicaid, the same thing is true. Medicaid will no 
longer be an entitlement. People who are poor, who fall below a certain 
income, whether they are disabled or pregnant women, whether they are 
children, in many cases they are not going to be entitled to health 
care coverage in the way that they have it now, because this bill, no 
matter how it is hammered out, is not going to provide them the same 
level of health care, and in some cases a lot of them may not get any 
health care at all.
  I am really outraged again that here we are at the eleventh hour 
before being told by the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Armey] that on 
Friday we will most likely vote on the budget bill that includes these 
terrible changes in Medicare and Medicaid, and to this day, even those 
who have been appointed to the conference, who are supposed to work out 
the details of this bill, have not been told the details of the bill. 
It is an outrage.

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